Mutineer's Moon

exploded. Scanner arrays, trip signals, and targeting systems shredded under his fire, and the weapons went mad. The shaft above him became a crazy—quilt of exploding energy beams and solid projectiles.

Anu’s head jerked up as bedlam erupted in one of the crawl ways. His automatic defenses had been triggered, but there was something wrong. They weren’t firing under proper control—they were tearing themselves apart!

* * *

The carnage lasted a good thirty seconds, and Colin probed the smoking wreckage carefully.

“That’s got it. On the other hand, we just rang the doorbell. Think we should keep going?”

“ ’Twould seem we ha’ scant choice.”

“I was afraid you’d say that. C’mon.”

Anu turned away from his console, and his face was almost relaxed.

It would take a while yet, but the sheer audacity of the attack had been decisive. Those heavy tanks had hurt, but it was surprise that had done in the enclave. The dreams of fifty thousand years were crumbling in his fingers, and it was all the fault of those crawling traitors from Nergal. Their fault, and the fault of his own gutless subordinates.

But if he’d lost, he could still see to it they lost, too. He walked calmly across the command deck to the fire control officer’s couch, insinuating his mind neatly into the console. He really should have provided a proper bomb, but this would do.

He initiated the arming sequence, then paused. No, wait. Let whoever was in the crawl way get here first. He wanted to watch at least one of the bastards know what was going to happen to his precious, putrid world.

Colin helped Jiltanith out of the crawl way, then paused, his face white. Jesus! The son-of-a-bitch was arming every warhead in the magazines!

“Come on!” he shouted, and hurled himself toward the command deck. His gauntleted hand slapped the emergency over-ride, and he charged through as the hatch licked open. His energy gun was ready, swinging to cover the captain’s console, but even as he burst onto the command deck, he knew he’d guessed wrong. The heavy hand of a grab field smashed at him, seizing him in fingers of iron. He stopped instantly, not even rocking with the impetus of his charge, unable even to fall in the armor that had become a prison.

“Nice of you to drop by,” a voice said, and he turned his head inside his helmet. A tall man sat at the gunnery console with an energy pistol in one hand. He didn’t look like the images of Anu from the records, but he wore the midnight blue of Battle Fleet with an admiral’s insignia.

“It’s over, Anu,” Colin said. “You might as well give it up.”

“No,” Anu said calmly, “I don’t think I’m the surrendering kind.”

“I know what kind you are,” Colin said contemptuously, keeping his eyes on Anu while his implants watched Jiltanith creeping closer and closer. She was belly-down on the deck, trying to work her way under the plane of the grab field, but her enhanced senses were less keen than his. Could she skirt it safely, or not?

“Do you, now?” Anu mocked. “I doubt that. None of you ever had the wit to understand me, or you would have joined me instead of trying to pull me down to your own miserable level.”

“Sure,” Colin sneered. “You’ve done a wonderful job, haven’t you? Fifty thousand years, and you’re still stuck on one piddling little planet.”

Anu’s face tightened and he started to trigger the warheads, then stopped and uncoiled from the couch like a serpent.

“No,” he murmured. “I think I’ll watch you scream a bit first. I’m glad you’re in armor. It’ll take a while to burn through with this little popgun, and you’ll feel it so nicely. Let’s start with an arm, shall we? If I start with a leg, you’ll just fall over, and that won’t be any fun.”

He came nearer, and sweat beaded Colin’s forehead. If the bastard came another three meters closer, Jiltanith would have a shot through the hatch—but he’d be able to see her, and she was flat on her belly. He wracked his brain as Anu took another step. And another. There had to be a way! There had to! They’d come so far…

Wait! Anu had been so damned confident, he might not have changed—

Anu took another step, and Jiltanith raised her grav gun. Her armor scuffed the deck so gently normal ears would not have heard it, but Anu was an Imperial. He whirled snake-quick, his eyes widening in shock, and the energy pistol swung down and fired like lightning.

It was all one blinding nightmare. Anu’s pistol snarled. Its energy bolt hit Jiltanith squarely in the spine and held there. Smoke burst from her armor, but she pressed the trigger and an explosive dart hit blew his right leg into tatters an instant before a sparkling corona of ruptured power packs glared above her armored body.

Colin heard her scream over his com link. Her grav gun fell from her hand and her armored body convulsed, and his world vanished in a boil of fury.

Anu hit the deck, screaming until his implants took control. They damped the pain, sealed the ruptured tissues, drove back the fog of shock, but it took precious seconds, and Colin’s implants—his bridge officer implants —reached out and demanded access to Osir’s computers.

There was a flicker of electronic shock, and then, like Nergal, Osir recognized him, for Anu hadn’t changed the command codes; it hadn’t even occurred to him to try. He stared at Colin in horror, momentarily stunned as even the loss of his leg had not stunned him, unable to believe what he was seeing. There were no bridge officers! He’d killed them all!

Colin’s mind flooded into Osir’s computers, killing the grab field. But hate and madness spurred Anu’s own efforts, and his command licked out to the fire control console. He enabled the sequenced detonation code.

Colin raced after it, trying to kill it, but he was in the wrong part of Osir’s brain. He couldn’t get to it, so he did the only other thing he could. He slammed down a total freeze of the entire command network, and every single system in the ship locked.

Anu screamed in frustration, and Colin staggered as the pistol snarled again. Energy slammed into his chest, but his armor held long enough for him to hurl himself aside. Anu swung the pistol, trying to hold it on his fleeing target, but he hadn’t counted on the adjustments Dahak had made to Colin’s implants. He misjudged his enemy’s reaction speed, and Colin slammed into a bulkhead in a clangor of armor and battle steel. He richocheted off like a bank shot, bouncing himself back towards Anu, and Anu screamed again as an armored foot reduced his pistol hand to paste. He tried to roll away, but Colin was on him like a demon. He reached down, jerking him up in a giant’s embrace, and his hands twisted.

Anu shrieked as his arms shattered, and for just an instant their eyes met—Anu’s mad with terror and pain, his own equally mad with hate and a pain not of his flesh—and Colin knew Anu’s life was his.

But he didn’t take it. He tossed his victim aside, cold in his fury, and the mutineer bounced off a bulkhead with another wail of agony. He slid to the deck, helpless in his broken body, and Colin ignored him as he flung himself to his knees beside Jiltanith. He couldn’t read her bio-read-outs through her badly damaged armor, and he lifted her in his arms, calling her name and peering into her helmet visor in desperation.

Her eyes opened slowly, and he gasped in relief.

“ ’Tanni! How … how badly are you hurt?”

“Certes, ’twas like unto an elephant’s kick,” she murmured dazedly, “yet ’twould seem I am unhurt.”

“Thank God!” he whispered, and she smiled.

“Aye, methinks He did have more than summat t’do wi’ it,” she replied, her voice a bit stronger. “ ’Twas that, or mine armor, or mayhap a bit o’ both. Yet having saved me, it can do no more, good Colin. I must come forth if I would move. That blast hath fused my servo circuits all.”

“You’re out of your mind if you think I’m letting you out of there yet!”

“So, thou art a tyrant after all,” she said, and he hugged her close.

“Rank hath its privileges, ’Tanni, and I’m getting you out of here in one piece, damn it!”

“As thou wilt,” she murmured with a small smile. “Yet what of Anu?”

“Don’t worry,” Colin said coldly.